From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Multi-touch is the name of a human-computer interaction technique and the hardware devices that implement it. It is a kind of touch screen or touch tablet / touchpad that recognizes multiple simultaneous touch points, frequently including the pressure or degree of each independently, as well as position. This allows gestures and interaction with multiple fingers or hands, chording, and can provide rich interaction, including direct manipulation, through intuitive gestures. Depending largely on their size, some multi-touch devices support more than one user on the same device simultaneously. One salient aspect of this technique is that it makes easy to zoom in or out in a Zooming User Interface with two fingers, for example, thereby providing a more direct mapping than with a single-point device like a mouse^[1] or stylus.^[2]

FingerWorks produced a line of keyboards that incorporated multi-touch gestures. FingerWorks has since been purchased by Apple, who has incorporated the technology into its iPhone^[3]. The firm Tactex Controls^[4] is one supplier of multi-touch pads.

Multi-touch has at least a 25 year history^[5], beginning in 1982, with pioneering work being done at the University of Toronto (multi-touch tablets) and Bell Labs (multi-touch screens).

• Jefferson Y. Han One of the main developers of multi-touch research
• Gesture recognition A similar style of Human Computer Interaction
• Zooming User Interface A style of interaction commonly used on multi-touch devices
• iPhone A future commercial implementation

1. ^ Panning and zooming on a ZUI with a mouse
2. ^ http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2004-20/2004-20.pdf
3. ^ http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=556&view=previous
4. ^ http://www.tactex.com/
5. ^ http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

• Jeff Han narrated video at TED conference
• Jeff Han demo video (unnarrated)
• Jeff Han official Multitouch research website
• NUI Group (Natural User Interface) - Open Source Multi Touch research community
• OnTheTableTop - Researcher who developed a multi-touch table with collaborative applications
• Tangent - Another multi-touch surface

This computer-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.